by CamelCity
tim-pelican wrote:
Just as a sanity check, there is a suitable action window between enemies engaging and them attacking where I can send one back to the staging area with A Light in the Dark, right?
There are actually 2 opportunities to play the event card:
1. As the prior poster mentioned, there is a player action window at the end of the engagement phase, after engagement checks have been made.
2. There is another player action window near the beginning of the combat phase, after shadow cards are dealt to enemies but before the enemies attack.
If you wait and play a card like "Light in the Dark" during the post-shadow card action window, you send the enemy back to staging and the shadow card to the discard pile.
You may find yourself in a situation where you can survive an enemy attack if there is no shadow effect, but will likely die if one of the nastier shadow effects kicks in. If you have the ability to peek at the top of the encounter deck (Hennamarth Riversong, Needful to Know, Rumor From the Earth, etc), you can avoid the bad shadow card by peeking at it at the end of the encounter phase, dealing it as a shadow card, then using Light in the Dark (or Feint, etc) to send the shadow card to the discard pile.